Tuesday, December 07, 2004



Something the size of your head

Apparently while I slept Australia got hit by a rock. Well, not hit as such - it broke up about 50km up - but the resulting explosion was between 0.5 and 1 kiloton, the size of a tactical nuclear weapon. It lit up the area like daylight for around four seconds, was detected on seismographs, and was heard as far away as Darwin. And all that from something the size of your head.

No-one was hurt, but its a timely reminder of what orbital mechanics can do, and that we might want to keep an eye out for this sort of thing in the future.

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